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How terribly apropos

I’ve decided that the title of my blog could apply equally well to this student housing complex. It is like a playground for older teenagers. I've just sat down in the Activity Center, which is equipped with a pool, patio, two gas grills, a gym and this computer room. (Never mind the basketball, volleyball and tennis courts.) I have to enjoy it now, as I am sure that, come the end of July, when my sublet runs out, when everyone's lease runs out or gets renewed and the fresh crop enters, it will be uninhabitable: screaming, drinking, smoking, toking, puking teenyboppers everywhere.

“My gorge rises to think on’t,” said Hamlet.

It comes with everything a young college student needs; I’m sure they even have lawyers on call for the occasional misdemeanor possession charge.

I just did a Google search for “apropos” to see if it needed an acute or a grave, and in the helpful completion bar Internet Explorer throws up (so to speak) I see someone did a search for “collage grove appt”, which is, I think, undergrad for “college grove apt”.

Yes, I will need to thoroughly enjoy this place, this Activity Center, then escape, running and screaming, to Maturityland come August. Oh, and speaking of August...

I spoke to Captain Smack’s girlfriend today. She is nice, a little flighty, but she is only, I think, nineteen years old. She offered me a freezer McMuffin when I left this morning for my photo shoot, which was awful nice of her. I offered up, by way of conversation, that she didn't have to spend all day cooped up in the Captain’s room, as it must get claustrophobic in there after sixteen hours or so. She said she didn't mind, and besides, she had a room herself in the complex, but the girls she roomed with were constant partiers, cramming as many as one hundred people in their apartment and private rooms. And the Captain worked six days a week, I think in construction, she said (a little proud), and she herself was off to job interviews.

I had thought, as I explained to her, that she was in there all day, as I had no way of knowing if they were in or out and, wishing each other luck, I left.

I had spoken to the Captain (sum of conversation: “Hello.” “Hey.” Lucky I spoke first or I would have gotten no words from him at all) once, and had seen the girl more often, usually doing laundry or putting together food in the kitchen. But she, again, was flighty or shy, and, aside from her poking her head out the patio door while I was smoking, which apparently startled her into speaking, we didn't really talk.

After the shoot, I scoured a couple Goodwill stores looking for a single pot and pan. When I got home, the Captain led a party of four guys out of his room. I said I was sorry to have missed the conference, which got some laughs. Then when the girl (haven’t nicknamed her yet, oh wait, yes I have) when Tennille got home she found the room locked.

I had her. She had to talk to me.

As I noted a while ago on this blog, I am suffering from a deficit of human conversation. Lately, cashiers find me unusually chatty. Since most of you know me as a dedicated anchorite, a hermit, I should explain. A person not needing much human contact can miss what little he has more than you think. I have spent my life, all except for the year in my own apartment, cohabitating with family, then roommates. I find I need those other people. I don’t need much: perhaps relating some story or picture I saw on the web can do it, but I need it and miss it.

(Incidentally, no one can find the street address and apartment number I had when I was in that apartment. Even I have no record of it. Coincidence? I think not.)

So, anyway. She needs to speak me. Muahahaha. I have her now in my clutches. She calls the Captain, complains, hangs up. I ask her how her job interviews went. Well, she has a problem. Turns out she was in a car with several other students when it got pulled over and one ounce of marijuana was found. Everyone in the car got charged with felonies but she got a lawyer and had it reduced to misdemeanor possession; she is now serving out her probation. After she is done, the record will be sealed, but for now, “I hate telling them. They’re all happy until they get to that section, and then their faces change, and they talk different to me.”

I understand how she feels.

She can get a warehouse job, but with a misdemeanor she ends up on third shift, which she, like most people, cannot handle. She also ends up there with tweakers, meth or cocaine abusers. She joked to some guy that he looked like he had been up for days.

Turned out he had.

Being a partying, drinking, toking and thoroughly modern girl, tweakers creep Tennille out. Also, you can have any kind of misdemeanor (assault, DUI) and work at a gas station (Mapco is the chain all over Tennessee) unless that misdemeanor is narcotics-related.

Then you’re screwed.

We chatted a bit about the police stop. Aside from bloodshot eyes and speeding (with the accelerator), it was a knock-and-talk operation. She complained that other cops had used the line about going easy if you cooperate and had meant it, but this guy didn’t.

“Wait, how many times have you been pulled over with weed?”

“Oh, like nine times.”

“NINE?! And you got busted once?! As your amateur psychologist, my diagnosis is that you have burned up all your bleeping luck, young lady.”

She laughed and agreed. She admitted to using tears to get cops to let her go. I was very bitter at this, and wished loudly for more female cops. Her dad was upset, too. That she got caught: both her parents toke.

What’s the emoticon for “rolling my eyes”?

The cops turned out in force, bragging about this being the kids’ first arrest, “like a party” she said, with about ten cop cars, taking three and a half hours to interrogate them before placing them under arrest and taking them downtown. Cavity searches for all!

I’m serious. Dumb local kids get nabbed with one ounce of pot and get cavity searches. All of them. Everyone in the car, because they were in the car. Now, if that doesn’t scare kids off drugs, and away from drug users, I don’t know what will. It’s right up there with Chris Rock's Tossed Salad Man.

Oh, but she still smokes. Apparently some nationwide nutrition supplement chain sells a “blood purification product” that, oddly enough, purifies you enough to pass urine tests. She has two months to go. Finally, her boyfriend shows up. His two friends, teasing her, talk about the plain brown wrappers (unmarked cop cars) hovering in the parking lot when they drove up.

“Dude, if anyone knocks, you don't know me. ‘Tennille who?’”

And folks: I knew that guy was Captain Smack. I didn’t smell anything, he didn’t tell me nothing, but I knew. I rule!

Heh. Baptist Keith (no tobacco, no alcohol, no coffee) and Captain Smack (vodka in the fridge, pothead girlfriend if not him as well) each have the rooms farthest from each other. Go figure. Me, I just want company: I know no one here.

Invented by my ex-wife, circa 1992. This was at the suggestion of one of our profs, who had remarked so often on her rolling her eyes that he decided, "you need to invent smiley for eyerolls." And lo, QQ was born.

“Disneyland isn’t perfect; it’s just the happiest place on Earth.” — Bill Whittle

Richard Schickel, movie critic for TIME, used “Fortress Disneyland” as an affectionate, exasperated epithet for the United States. I love it. It says everything about us that makes us great.
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